Need Advice! Do I Need a New Camshaft????

[Atlfan65]

Hey everyone, needing some guidance here. Yesterday I tried to install a new distributor into my 1965 C10 stepside with a carbed stock Vortec 350. I dropped the distributor in but it needed aligned with the oil pump to drop in the final 1/4".

I'd been told to bump the engine over slowly and the distributor would drop down into place when everything lined up. Well, after lightly bumping the engine enough times for the engine to fully rotate over one time, the distributor still hadn't dropped into place. So I got a wrench and turned the motor over as slowly as I could by hand to try and get it to drop into place. No luck. But then I saw that the rotor was not turning as I turned the engine over... Yikes...

So I pulled the distributor out only to find that some of the gear teeth had been sheered off. I guess this happened when bumping the motor over? I was told to bump it over but I guess this was horrible advice that just cost me dearly. Where I need help is that I don't know the extent of damage that was done. Would the cam have gotten tore up too or do the cam gears sacrifice themselves to save the cam? It was a melonized steel gear which I understand is softer than the cam so I'm hoping that the gear took all the damage, but could very easily see the cam having been eaten up.

Finances for the truck are low right now and I'm really trying to avoid a new cam if I can avoid it. If I put a magnet into the hole for the distributor and can remove the teeth that were sheered off, would is be safe to try a new distributor or will the engine need torn apart to get any other metal out? Or is the cam probably destroyed anyways and it needs torn apart regardless?

Any guidance that you guys can give me is much appreciated. When I get home from work later I will try a magnet to remove any metal that I can. Then I'll drop in my old distributor and see if it rotates with the engine when I turn it over by hand. If I can remove the metal and the rotor spins with the engine being turned over like it should, would it be safe the say that the cam is alright??